Why Nokia does not need a "Finnish Steve Jobs" to lead the turnaround

The mobile phone industry is changing at a pace that has left many established players far behind. The biggest victim of this change is Nokia and while the company is still selling millions of low-priced feature phones, the organization is struggling to deliver a Smartphone that even just matches current industry standards. These problems culminated in recent weeks with some high-level employees leaving the organization (Jan Chipchase, famous ethnographer and Adam Greenfield, Head of Nokia Design Direction), long-term supporters jumping the ship (Symbian-Guru.com is Over) and the increasing rumors about the replacement of Nokia CEO Kallasvuo (Nokia boosted by talk of Kallasvuo exit). And a look at the stock price tells you that there is more than just bad economic conditions that hammered the price of NOK. 

In order to get out of this situation, Nokia needs to do two things:

1. Define a new vision what Nokia, mobile communication and “connecting people” means in the future. A touch smartphone with maps, app store and music store (aka Nokia Ovi) will not be enough to reach a leadership position again. What is next after Smartphones? What is next after app stores?
2. Streamline the organization; optimize processes and increase performance, speed and agility in the organization with just one single goal: bringing new products to the market. Not concepts, not demos, real products that “wow” customers.

With these challenges ahead some obeservers are looking for a "Finnish Steve Jobs” for Nokia. But that will not – and should not – happen.

Nokia does not need a "Steve Jobs"

Nokia is still an excellent example of a design-driven companies. Jan Chipchase, former Nokia ethnographer (who left Nokia recently), has reached celebrity status with his research on mobile phone use in emerging markets. The Nokia 1100 is still the world’s best selling mobile phones. There have been countless design studies from Nokia about the future of mobile communication yet despite all these activities and concepts, none of them made it into real products that had sustainable success in the mobile market.

The negative highlight was the recent announcement of Nokia bicycle charger kit. Clearly this is not the way to beat Apple, Motorola, Samsung and Research in Motion and whoever was in charge of that should reconsider what his job is.

The reasons are manifold for this mess, ranging from bad integration of various companies and technologies into the Ovi platform, hanging on to the featurephone strategy for too long and still hoping that Symbian OS will catch up with other operating systems and countless other legacies that hold the design teams back instead of enabling them to write the next chapter in the mobile industry history.

Of course a "Finnish Steve Jobs" who has the same degree of reputation, respect and leadership qualities could lead a turnaround at Nokia. But Steve Jobs is Steve Jobs because he started Apple, got fired, came back, led the turned, survived cancer, revolutionized the mobile industry and through this created a company that has nearly outgrown its investor in 1997, Microsoft, which it needed at that time to even ensure liquidity. Steve Jobs is an outlier, a wonder child and genius.

Betting the survival of a company on finding an “outlier” leader like Steve Jobs is foolish. And setting the expectations that the next CEO will be a Steve Jobs will be fatal: cause he won’t be a Steve Jobs and can only dissappoint.

A co-CEO strategy with a business and a design leader

Nokia still has design capabilities, but at the end of the day it comes down to managing processes, operations and projects that turn these capabilities into real product. The best design capabilities in the industry are worth nothing if the organization doesn’t have the processes – from procurement, production, supply chain and marketing – that work together to deliver innovations. Nokia needs leadership that addresses the two most urging issues: First it is about leaving feature phones behind, catching up with Smartphones and envisioning the future of mobile communication. Second it is about creating a world-class organization that can execute this vision, without politics, without bureaucracy but with a clear focus on results.

Instead of searching for the “dear leader for Nokia” who can do this in one person, Nokia should aim for a co-CEO strategy with one CEO responsible for business operations and one CEO responsible for the design and engineering direction in the organization.

The “business-driven CEO” is responsible for business operations should be easy to find and his job is to streamline the organization, as fast as possible. The “design-driven CEO” does not need to be the ultimate visionary. Instead it

should be a designer who can lead the design organization (and be respected through his achievements and experience) but who is also able to work with the business side in the organization to develop the best concepts and to bring the best concepts to market.

I also think it is important to differentiate between a Chief Design Office and a design-driven co-CEO. While the first one still reports to the CEO, the design-driven co-CEO will be in charge just as much as the business-driven co-CEO.

First fix the organisational aspects, then the design challenges

Who is more important? I believe an excellent “Business-driven CEO” is more important in the coming 12 months than a “Design-driven CEO”. Nokia still has to catch up and therefore it needs to get its existing operations in order and turn existing concepts into reality. At the same time this gives time to build and nurture internal design talent with one person becoming “Design-driven CEO”.

Whatever will be next for Nokia, it is a fascinating moment in the company’s history and the industry as a whole. Will Nokia make the turnaround? It depends on the pressure – even the pain – that the organization feels in order to implement the changes necessary for a turnaround. Is the pressure and pain already high enough? We will find out in the coming weeks and months and see either a new and revived Nokia that will strive in the industry or a Nokia that will merely exist, holding on to existing strategies and keeping alive with innovative tactics.

inspired by The Register: Rescuing Nokia: A former exec has a radical plan